Developing Danish general practice

nurses and other staff. Their main source of income is reimbursement. GPs are paid by a mixture of per capita payment and fees for services. Privately paid fees from patients or other services outside the National Health Service account for only a modest turnover [ 6 ] . GP offi ces are contracted to be open on all weekdays from 8:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., with the fi rst hour reserved for telephone consultations. On one weekday, opening hours run to 6 p.m. or 7 p.m. The Regions now want longer hours to provide accessibility outside normal working hours without supplying any additional fi nancing. The GPs are supposed to make effi ciency gains as has been done in the hospitals, even though these effi ciency gains are at least in part attained by transferring tasks to general practice. Furthermore, GPs will be forced to take over public health and preventive health tasks from the municipalities with no extra payment and without prior negotiations. It is proposed that patient care data from general practice, including diagnoses, prescriptions, laboratory tests, and information from hospitals, which until now have been used for quality improvement and research, will now also be used to monitor the individual GP. The anticipated confl ict may have a great impact not only on health care for patients. Development may be slowed down and research in primary health care may be halted for a period. In a situation with no agreement between the GPs and Danish Regions, data from the GPs ’ electronic record system cannot be expected to be forwarded to the joint unit for quality development between the Organisation of General Practitioners and the Danish Regions. The risk of losing valuable data is substantial. Negotiation rather than legislation is the solution, if we want to preserve effective primary health care in Denmark. Latest: on 29 June 2013 the Organisation of General Practitioners decided that the Danish general practitioners should not collectively give up their provider number. The chairman Henrik Confl ict of interests